Welcome to the Land of Mist

Author: A Little White Snake

Synopsis:

[ Farming, development, exploration, evolution, lord ]

Shen Xing accidentally entered a game that was unimaginably realistic, where players could upgrade buildings, develop troops, explore the mist...

The game difficulty was extremely high, and he awakened the hidden talent [Life-Sacrifice Evolution] at the start, which could sacrifice attributes to make troops complete evolution.

Yet he accidentally discovered that he seemed to be able to freeload on this talent, continuously evolving his troops without any cost...

Various powerful troops were evolved out by him one after another.

When other players were still racking their brains and expending resources to cultivate high-tier troops,

orcs, ancient trolls, mist dragons, howling moon celestial wolves, six-winged angels, and demon monarchs already appeared in Shen Xing's territory...

Until one day, when he saw the monsters in the game entering reality, he realized that things were not simple...

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Land of Mist

"I got it, I got it!"

Late at night, in the Plague Plains, thick mist rolled.

A young man wore silver-white light armor and held an ancient lantern.

The light emitted by the lantern dispelled the surrounding mist and also illuminated that excited face.

"The Book of the Dead, the key wondrous item that can allow tier-3 undead-type troops to advance to tier-4, and the recent transaction price in the trading bureau reached 6.24 million!"

Clutching the pitch-black, archaic book in his hand, he said excitedly, "It was worth wiping out all my troops to come here; I can retire after finishing this job!"

"Weiwei, wait for me; I'll soon have the money to marry you."

"Mom, hold on; I'll schedule Dr. Liu's surgery for you in a couple of days."

Just at this moment, the surrounding thick mist suddenly surged without warning.

It was as if many black shadows were roaming in the mist, and the illumination range of the lantern in his hand was also suppressed to become smaller and smaller.

"It can't be that thing, can it..."

The young man's face instantly turned pale white, and a bone-chilling coolness shot up his spine.

Splat... Splat...

A peculiar sound of footsteps echoed by his ears, like some behemoth stepping on rotting flesh and blood, slowly approaching.

Every muffled sound deepened the fear in the young man's heart by a fraction.

The light of the lantern in his hand rapidly contracted, compressed from ten meters to five meters, then to three meters, and finally leaving only a small ball of faint light of less than half a meter.

The thick mist enveloped him like an invisible giant hand, and a sense of suffocation continuously struck.

"Ah!!!"

The fear in his heart completely exploded, and he ran wildly toward the rear regardless of everything.

He had just run two steps when his entire body crashed into a cold and soft mass.

When he stiffly raised his head, his face had already turned an ash-like livid, and his pupils widened like those of a dead fish.

"No... Don't kill me... I don't want to die..."

"Splat!"

A tearing sound came from the darkness, accompanied by a scalp-tingling sound of chewing, and this area quickly returned to silence.

Late at night in Jiangcheng, a young man violently bolted upright from his bed.

Extreme fear remained on his face, and his pupils trembled slightly, as if he had just experienced a nightmare.

"Perhaps what the forum says is false; it's just a game after all, how could anyone actually die..."

He muttered to himself with a bit of wishful thinking, his entire body curled up under the covers.

Drip... Drip...

The sound of dripping water in the bathroom was exceptionally clear in the dead of night, and time ticked away second by second.

"Two hours have already passed, and I'm fine!"

The young man leaped up from the bed abruptly, excitedly checking his body: "Great, those posts on the forum really are fake!"

"How dare they lie to me; see if I don't expose you rumor-mongers!"

With those words, he prepared to open his phone and log into the forum.

Yet right at this moment, a piercing, excruciating pain came from all over his body.

Through the bedroom mirror, he saw terrifying bite marks appearing out of thin air on his body.

It seemed an invisible, giant mouth was unhurriedly chewing his flesh and blood.

His skin was torn, his bones continuously made cracking sounds, and his entire body was as if gripped in the jaws of a transparent behemoth.

"Splat! Splat, splat!!"

Blood sprayed, accompanied by a heart-rending scream.

Thick fog surged out of his body in waves, instantly filling the entire room!

The fog spread rapidly, soon covering the more-than-twenty-story apartment building.

Countless people were enveloped in the mist in their sleep.

And deep within the fog, a colossal silhouette was slowly taking shape.

"Boo-boo-boo-!"

The piercing wail of sirens cut through the night sky over Jiangcheng at five in the morning.

Shen Xing sat in his wheelchair, watching red and blue lights flash past on the street outside the window. His brow furrowed slightly.

"What's going on with Jiangcheng lately? Police cars and fire engines are blaring every day. It never used to happen this often."

He opened his phone and searched online.

"Jiangcheng apartment building shrouded in thick smoke; suspected pipe leak. Fire crews currently en route."

"Wild animal attacks reported recently at Lotus Lake Park; relevant authorities have resolved the situation."

"Shocking! Unidentified fog appears in multiple locations. Meteorological experts say it may be linked to recent abnormal temperatures."

Some of the news was true and some false, but all were brief reports of just a few lines.

Even when they occasionally included a few so-called on-site photos, they were very blurry, as if they had been deliberately altered.

"Grrr..."

A rumble of protest from his stomach interrupted his thoughts.

Shen Xing wheeled himself smoothly out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. He took some frozen dumplings from the fridge and tossed them into the microwave.

"Bzz-bzz~" His phone vibrated again.

He opened it and saw a message pop up in the Green Bubble chat app, in a four-person group called [Refined and Easygoing].

Cilantro Who Loves to Play: "Hey, guys, did you all get the glasses I sent you?"

The other two people in the group replied that they had. Shen Xing glanced at the package on the living room dining table and sent back, "Mm."

Cilantro Who Loves to Play: "These are special gaming glasses. They say you can enter a game just by putting them on. It claims to be 99.999% realistic."

"The game's still in closed beta right now. I only managed to get four slots through a bunch of different channels, so don't let my good intentions go to waste."

Another person, whose avatar was a boy wearing a hat and whose username was "Sole Lender Through the Ages," said, "Qin Lang, are you bullshitting? 99.999%? Why not just say the game's coming to life?"

Another person, whose avatar was a pink rabbit and whose username was "I Eat Eat Eat Eat," chimed in too: "Yeah. There isn't even a single VR game in the whole world that runs reliably right now. Don't tell me you got conned."

Cilantro Who Loves to Play explained, "It's real. At first, I thought it was impossible too, but I went in and tried it out last night. It felt absolutely real!"

"When players first enter the game, they spawn in a small village. There's a bonfire in the center of the village."

"The outside is filled with heavy fog. It's dangerous, and there are lots of monsters wandering around, so you can't go out there lightly."

"We need to upgrade the bonfire, expand the village, and upgrade more buildings."

"Oh, right. The system also lets you randomly choose a troop type."

"I randomly got an ordinary one-star-and-a-half halfling. He looked like a Hobbit and could even talk to me."

In the group chat, as the others listened to him describe everything so vividly, their doubts gradually faded.

Sole Lender Through the Ages: "If there really is a game this realistic, then I've gotta give it a try."

"Once it's released to the public, it'll definitely take the world by storm."

"Then I'll start livestreaming and rake in some cash. Maybe I can use this game to pay off the money I owe."

I Eat Eat Eat Eat: "Sounds really interesting. I'll give it a try too."

Cilantro Who Loves to Play asked, "What about you, Shen Xing? Are you going to play?"

"Maybe in this realistic game, you'll get to experience what it feels like to stand again."

The group chat fell silent for a brief moment.

Shen Xing lowered his head and looked at his withered legs. A bitter smile touched his lips.

A few years ago, he had still been a young, fresh-faced college student who had just graduated. Unable to find a job, he registered for an account and started delivering takeout.

Then one rainy night, a Dayun N6 that couldn't stop in time ran over him like he was a speed bump.

The good news was that he had survived.

The bad news was that his legs were ruined.

The good news was that they found the driver responsible.

The bad news was that the driver hadn't bought insurance.

He was still young, had no savings, and had no parents. His life was pretty much over.

For years, he had barely gotten by on government assistance. His whole world each day was this rented apartment, less than thirty square meters in size.

But he was alive. What else could he do? It wasn't like he could jump off a building, right?

Just then, Loves Cilantro sent another message: "By the way, the game gives you a huge amount of freedom, and the troops inside are just like real people."

"Apparently, players can recruit some really beautiful troops, too, like beast-eared girls, half-elves, succubi, and stuff like that."